by Peter Murphy
Perhaps it’s because I’ve moved on from my own pain, or perhaps I’m just tired: I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I simply feel sad that it had to come to this: and that the cycle of abuse, injury, concealment, discovery, and retribution will probably continue long after this particular drama, and those actors who have featured in it, have left the stage. But at the same time, I also feel hopeful. I feel hopeful when I think how many heroes I have in my life: when I think about Ed Rafferty, and the guy with the typewriter on East Seventy-Second Street; and about Andrew Pilkington, John Caswell, Ted Phillips, Steffie Walsh, Julia Cathermole, Ginny Castle, and Ben Schroeder; and about the people at the centre of my world, Ken and Emily. Because when I think of them, I know that I’m not alone: I know that there are others who care, and who won’t let the cycle repeat itself unopposed.
That’s the best feeling of all.
Author’s Note
This is a novel. The events and characters depicted in it are fictitious, as is Lancelot Andrewes School; and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All authors say that, and mean it, routinely. But in this case, I want to go a bit farther, because any author who sets a novel in a particular time in the past, such as 1974, inevitably encounters, in the course of writing about it, real people who lived and played their part in the real history of that time. It is never a comfortable encounter, and certainly not in this book; and for that reason, I want to ensure that I distinguish fact from fiction more particularly in one or two cases. Any of my readers who wishes to do so can easily discover the identity of the Attorney General in 1974. He was a man of ability and integrity, who served in public life for many years with great distinction. In case I haven’t made it clear in the book, as I intended, no suspicion of misconduct of any kind falls on his shoulders. Similarly, there is also no suggestion that the Diocese of Ely, or any of its employees or agents at the time, was guilty of any misconduct. I had the honour of knowing the then Bishop of Ely personally, and I know that he would never have been party to covering up any scandal, much less the kind of scandal I describe in this book.
But while an author may say that his work is fictitious, he may equally say that the story he tells is intended to represent some truth about the human condition; and in that case, he may fairly describe his story as a myth. Howard Sasportas once defined a myth as something that never happened, but happens all the time. He meant, I think, that the essence of a myth is that it reveals recurring human archetypes in the comforting garb of fiction, and so illuminates those archetypes for us when we encounter them in our lives. In that context, for me, the story I tell is a myth: I point no finger at any individual in public life in 1974, yet I point the finger at many such throughout the course of history.
Child sexual abuse is an archetype that has always been with us, but it has come into particular focus in recent times. In the UK, we have set in motion a public inquiry on a vast scale – so vast that its very ability to carry out its mandate is in question, even leaving aside its ill-starred beginnings, during which it has lost, not only its first leaders, but also the trust of many victims. The scale of the abuse under inquiry is almost too great to credit. The horrific revelations of clerical abuse, across a wide spectrum of churches and clerical educational establishments, are as remarkable for the systematic and cynical attempts by the churches to cover them up, and to protect predatory priests and ministers from investigation, as for the casual obscenity and disregard for the most basic of human dignities they permitted to flourish for so long. Not far behind in this sickening history is the prevalence of familial abuse, and the chilling reality of the horrors that lay hidden under the casting couch, and behind cheerful phrases such as ‘Jim fixed it for me’.
One of the more encouraging signs in more recent times is the extent to which we have enabled victims to come forward in the expectation that they will be believed, and that action will be taken to investigate their complaints, and to prosecute those against whom there is evidence of sexual offences. The system is still far from perfect, but we have come a long way from 1974. Those of my readers who are not lawyers may be surprised by the fact that, historically, children were not automatically regarded as competent witnesses; and by the extent to which the rules of corroboration were then capable of rendering prosecution cases untenable. Children are now subject to the same test of competence as other witnesses, and the corroboration rules have since been abolished almost in their entirety: arguably, a swing of the pendulum too far. The rules of corroboration were unduly technical, and far too restrictive, but the concepts underlying them were neither illogical nor unreasonable. Sadly, there are cases of deliberately false allegations, of childish hysteria, and of misguided and mistaken allegations, and these realities must also be addressed in any balanced system of law. But almost everyone, myself included, agrees that the law today is a vast improvement on the law of 1974.
The courts are also far more open to evidence of recovered memory. In 1974, the subject was by no means as well understood as I have depicted it in this book. Until the sudden focus on such evidence in the 1980s and 1990s, as the result of the long-running series of satanic ritual accusations – which overshadowed even the Salem witch trials in their subjugation of scientific principle to naked superstition – relatively little attention had been paid to it. In an attempt to make the issues comprehensible, I have allowed my judges and lawyers to sound knowledgeable about it – vastly more so than they would have sounded in 1974. The truth is that in 1974, claims of recovered memory would have been regarded by most lawyers as just another example of unreliable memory, and would have been attacked as such in the course of a trial. Many judges would have refused to allow such evidence even to go to a jury. Today, while expert opinion on the subject remains divided, and while it must be treated with appropriate caution, judges are far more likely to leave evidence of recorded memory to the common sense of juries, which, subject to proper judicial oversight, is the appropriate test for evidence in criminal cases.
Victims of sexual abuse still have much to fear; and the fear of not being believed, and of having their claims ridiculed and dismissed out of hand, is one of the most terrible injustices our legal system has tolerated in our relatively recent history. We deal with such fears much more compassionately and effectively than we used to, and we show much greater ambition to bring perpetrators to justice, whoever they may be, and behind whatever religious, political, or establishment façades they may seek to hide. All that is good. But there is still a long way to go, and the problem is enormous. I am not presumptuous enough to suggest that this book should play any major part in taking it further. But mythology has a proven track record in attracting people’s attention, and if my myth can do that to any small extent, I will be glad.
As ever, my thanks: to my friends at No Exit Press, especially Ion Mills and Claire Watts, for their confidence in my writing; to my editor, Sally Partington; to my agent, Guy Rose; and above all, to my wife Chris. As I write this, we are days away from our silver anniversary, and throughout that time, she has been my rock and my unfailing support in all I do.
Copyright
First published in 2017
by No Exit Press
an imprint of Oldcastle Books
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© Peter Murphy 2018
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either
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